Frederick Douglass' Dream for Equality

Abolition stopped Frederick Douglass dead in his tracks and forced him

to reinvent himself. He learned the hard central truth about abolition. Once

he learned what that truth was, he was compelled to tell it in his speeches and

writings even if it meant giving away the most secret truth about himself. From

then on, he accepted abolition for what it was and rode the fates.

The truth he learned about abolition was that it was a white enterprise.

It was a fight between whites. Blacks joined abolition only on sufferance.

They also joined at their own risks. For a long time, Douglass, a man of pride

For years there had been disagreements among many abolitionists. Everyone

had their own beliefs towards abolition. There was especially great bitterness

between Douglass and William Lloyd Garrison, dating from the early 1850's when

Douglass had repudiated Garrisonian Disunionism. Garrisonians supported the

idea of disunion. Disunion would have relieved the North of responsibility for

the sin of slavery. It would have also ended the North's obligation to enforce

the fugitive slave law, and encourage a greater exodus of fugitive slaves

whites? Douglass resolved never again to risk himself to betrayal. Troubled,

makes us for the time at least, forget those differences. No class of men are

and business interests to conciliate southern whites, and an end to federal

did build the foundation for later equality movements by Martin Luther King.

the South. (161,162 Perry) Douglass did not support this idea because it would

Some topics in this essay:
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